‘Cobra Kai’ Season 5 Shows Johnny Lawrence’s Vulnerable Side, William Zabka Says
Cobra Kai has a way of making former villains the good guys. Even Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) was in a better place before John Kreese (Martin Kove) sucked him back into Cobra Kai. The original reformed villain is Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Zabka says that by Cobra Kai Season 5, Johnny is also much more vulnerable.
Showbiz Cheat Sheet participated in roundtable interviews with the cast of Cobra Kai. In Zabka’s, he discussed Johnny’s vulnerability. Cobra Kai Season 5 premieres Sept. 9 on Netflix, and we’ll still have more with the cast and creators all month.
Johnny Lawrence has come a long way on ‘Cobra Kai’
Cobra Kai Season 1 seems like such a long time ago. For the original fans, it was 2018 on YouTube, although Netflix viewers caught up in 2020. Looking back, Zabka marveled at where Johnny began.
“Johnny at the beginning, he’s a recluse,” Zabka said. “He’s a recluse who’s shut the world out. He hasn’t grown, and he hasn’t evolved with the times, and he meets this kid and sticks up for him and becomes a sensei and is slowly finding himself. He’s shedding the layers of skin that are on him to find more who he could have been without Kreese. He’s working all these things through, so at this point from season 1, he’s just locked up in his shell.”
By ‘Cobra Kai’ Season 5, Johnny Lawrence has opened up
Over the past four seasons of Cobra Kai, Johnny started teaching students, but Kreese took Cobra Kai away from him. He’s patched things up with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and begun a relationship with Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) while still trying to make amends with his son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan).
“By season 5, he’s a lot more vulnerable,” Zabka said. “He’s learned a lot. But he’s still got his guts, and he still has a long way to go. He’s still thick headed and he’s one beer away from a very bad accident. He’s evolving and the characters and the relationships are.
William Zabka likes Johnny’s progress
Zabka still values the nature of Johnny’s character under all his bravado.
I think he just has a good heart. He was taught wrong as a kid so all his rough edges were kind of downloaded into his system and he is still stuck in the past. He’s a work in progress. He’s waking up. He’s been in kind of a shell for a few decades and he’s de-thawing like a caveman and slowly coming to life and slowly connecting with the world and the internet and phones. He’s learning new big words like Goggle and Interneting, and gig jobs and all that stuff. Cell phones still, so he’s learning. It’s fun to play that stuff because I was there when all that started. I was there before it existed so I get to relive that in fast-forward motion.
William Zabka, Cobra Kai Season 5 roundtable, 8/26/22
